President Obama’s 2012 program to defer deportation of young illegal immigrants greatly eased their ability to get jobs, credit cards, bank accounts, driver’s licenses and even Obamacare despite their undocumented status, according to a new Harvard University report.

The review of over 2,000 young illegals given relief from deportation by Obama’s June 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, found that many have won the same benefits as U.S. citizens, including higher education despite the failure of the so-called Dream Act that led to the president’s initiative.

“Since receiving DACA, many have obtained new jobs and internships. Some have also opened bank accounts and obtained credit cards,” said the study just published in the journal American Behavioral Scientist.

It added: “And although the Affordable Care Act does not guarantee health insurance to DACA recipients, a significant share of our respondents have reported obtaining health care since receiving their DACA paperwork.”

Federal wildlife officials have granted protection to the Gunnison sage grouse, a move that could bring restrictions on oil and gas drilling and other land uses to preserve the bird’s habitat in Colorado and Utah.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday the bird is a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

“We believe the best science available points to the conclusion that the bird, while not facing extinction … is still likely to face extinction in the future,” said Dan Ashe, the agency’s director.

About 1.4 million acres will be designated as the species’ critical habitat, Ashe said. About 5,000 Gunnison sage grouse remain in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah.

The extent of restrictions on oil and gas drilling and other land use was not immediately known.

“…not facing extinction … is still likely to face extinction in the future…” Can you name a species to which that statement doesn’t apply?

He was saying that voters would balk if Democrats put a heavy tax on their insurance policies so, instead, Democrats taxed insurers. The result, however was the same. They could tax your policy $100 or they could tax the insurer $100 who would, in turn, raise your premium $100. The net effect to you is the same except that Obama could claim that he wasn’t raising your taxes.

People swallowed it hook, line and sinker and let the Democrats get away with it.

The European Space Agency’s Philae lander has made space history by successfully reaching the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The landing, which took place at 11.03 AM ET, was accompanied by rapturous scenes at the ESA’s control room in Darmstadt, Germany.

Philae is the first probe to land on a comet.

Earlier on Wednesday, the ESA released the first image of its Philae lander separating from the Rosetta mothership on its ambitious mission toward the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The separation, which took place around 4 AM ET, marked the start of a 7-hour journey to the comet’s surface. The Rosetta spacecraft and its Philae lander have been on a decade-long mission through the solar system to rendezvous with the comet.

Recall, Professor Jonathan Gruber – a key architect of Obamacare – explained how lies and deception about the law were necessary to get it passed and were, therefore, beneficial features of the process.

Rep. Trey Gowdy and Fox News’ Megan Kelly discuss the admission of M.I.T. Professor Jonathan Gruber that deception was used to get the Affordable Health Care Act through Congress. Megan Kelly states this story may be the “smoking gun”. Gowdy states he “cannot get past the irony” to deal with the arrogance of the remarks.

Gruber is credited as being the bill’s “architect”. He said “the lack transparency” can be a “huge political advantage”. He states it was necessary because of the “stupidity of the American voter. In video shot late last year he appeared to be sharing with a like-minded group the cleverness of their strategy.

Wheeler worries that the president’s more drastic approach is too simplistic, according to people familiar with his thinking. With his long experience in the telecommunications industry, Wheeler is well aware of concerns that ill-considered regulations could stifle innovation and slow the growth of the country’s broadband infrastructure, those people said. And he worries that the White House is being naive about the ripple effects of changing how a major piece of national infrastructure is governed.

One telecom industry lobbyist was sympathetic to Wheeler’s position: “I don’t think anybody goes into the FCC saying, ‘I want to be at the center of drama.’ But they seem to find themselves there frequently.”

Behind closed doors, Wheeler has fretted about how Republicans on Capitol Hill would react to far-reaching net neutrality rules, according to people familiar with his deliberations. Already on Monday, the Senate Republican leadership dismissed Obama’s plan as “last century’s rules.”

Obama would probably veto an attempt by Republicans to roll back any FCC rules. But Congress could hamstring the FCC by withholding funding on other, lower-profile issues, and it could put Wheeler in the hot seat during congressional hearings or as the target of lengthy investigations.

Obama insists, however, that a pornographer pumping out ten trillion bits a day of high definition smut should pay the same amount for last-mile infrastructure as your church pays for its five-hits-a-day website.

China has agreed to stop its massive and ongoing increases in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Just 15 more years of huge increases and then, they promise, they won’t grow any further. They are producing about 8 billion tons now and will increase that to 11 billion tons (about 40%) by 2030.

The US, meanwhile, will start cutting right now. Under the deal, the United States must cut its carbon emissions – and thus energy production – between 26-28% — from levels established in 2005 — by 2025.

China and the United States made common cause on Wednesday against the threat of climate change, staking out an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in greenhouse gases.

The landmark agreement, jointly announced here by President Obama and President Xi Jinping, includes new targets for carbon emissions reductions by the United States and a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030.

So the agreement with China is that China gets to continue to increase energy growth for 15 years and the US must start cutting back radically right now. None of this, of course, will have the slightest impact on the climate.

We know now that the explanation was that Simon was snared in a trap set by people who wanted to end the death penalty, no matter what the cost. Once they convinced Simon it was for his own good, he was all in.

And now, finally, he’s out and back in Chicago. Simon enjoyed a lobster dinner on his first day of freedom. Ekl said he doesn’t think Simon has family still in Milwaukee and is not planning to return here. Too many painful memories.

Simon’s mother died while he was in prison. He told the filmmaker he’s eager to reconnect with his daughter and see his grandchild for the first time.

Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber explains last year how 1) the law was consciously written to obscure the fact that the individual mandate is a tax and 2) that the law was purposefully muddied to ensure that people did not realize its foundational principle is that the healthy subsidize the sick.

Why? He explains that it had to be built on lies and obfuscation because the American people would not have allowed it to pass if they had known what it really was.

This is a stunning video in which the architect of Obama’s signature achievement boasts that it was passed by making sure that the people’s wishes were undermined and discarded.

Net Neutrality will get framed in a way that makes it seem like you are being protected. That is bullshit. It has nothing do to with you. You are a mouse among the stomping feet of three fighting dinosaurs: Content providers, bandwidth providers and the government.

In one corner is Netflix, Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. They you to have blazing fast internet so they can get their product to you. They also want to ride for free on infrastructure for which they don’t have to pay. This is Team NetNewt.

On the other side is Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc. They own the wired and wireless intertoobs that connect your viewing device. They want bandwidth hogs like Netflix and Facebook to pay part of the upkeep of their intertoob wires and waves. This is team PayGo.

Team NetNewt sucks because they figure they should get the same deal as the Real Revo: Free transport on the last mile. The thing is that the Revo is a tiny little drip compared to the 10,000X Amazon/Mississippi/Niagara Falls deluge of Team NetNewt. They are multi-billion dollar companies getting subsidized by your grandma who just wants to check her email once a week but has to help pay for my 24/7/365 triple 1080i HD streams.

Team PayGo sucks because they would rather keep the Internet slow and get you to keep paying for their shitty landline service and crapulet cable television service. If they give you fast connections, you will drop cable and your dial tone. The last thing they want is innovation.

Obama says he wants net neutrality because he wants to make sure that government regulators, not Team PayGo, are deciding who does and doesn’t get a fast lane. He wants “net neutrality” but he sure as hell doesn’t want a neutral network. He wants control and a cut of the revenue in the form of taxes.

Where does that leave you? Team NetNewt wants you to pay more for your Internet Service. Team PayGo wants you to pay more for Netflix and Amazon products. Obama wants to control what you see and don’t see and wants to be able to monitor it.

This week marks the seventh birthday of the Real Revo. It also marks another milestone. I will soon be stepping down as a daily poster here.

Before I explain why, I want to say the the Real Revo will live on. The other bloggers on this site do a great job and they plan to continue with the same quality commentary they have offered for years.

I also want to say that I will still be a commentator so I won’t disappear completely. I don’t think I am capable of staying away completely. For the record, Mrs. Walker says I won’t be able to scale back at all. It won’t be easy.

That said, I will at the very least be reducing my role. I have new responsibilities in a different enterprise and I really need to focus my mental energy on that business for a while.

Furthermore, I need a break. Seven years of almost daily blogging has resulted in a need to recharge my creative batteries. Hopefully at some time in the future I will find my way back to daily blogging with a renewed energy and a renewed relevance.

We started this blog about the time Obama declared his candidacy for president. Today, he has been rendered a lame duck by a wave election. It feels like a good time to take a break.

I have made so many friends here that it is very hard to back off but back off I must… at least for a while. I will keep posting up until around Thanksgiving but after that, I will be off dealing with other things.

You are in good hands with Jim, Nota, Brad, Roy, James, Bman, Vanagram, Rockheim and the other cobs.

When I was young, I thought that evil wall was forever. When I was a young paratrooper, I thought I might have to fight and die in West Germany. Now the wall and two Germanys are long gone. To celebrate the demise of the wall and East Germany, a commemoration…

Just days after his party was routed in the midterm elections, President Obama said that he and his White House team had not succeeded in effectively selling the benefits of his policies to the American people, calling it a “failure of politics” that he must change in the final two years of his presidency.

“It’s not enough just to build a better mousetrap,” Mr. Obama said in an interview that was taped Friday at the White House and broadcast Sunday on the 60th anniversary of CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “People don’t automatically come beating to your door. We’ve got to sell it. We’ve got to reach out to the other side and, where possible, persuade.”

This is a twist on the answer to this job interview question: “What would you say is your biggest weakness?”

“Why, sometimes I become so focused and work so hard other aspects of my life suffer.”

Obama wants to tell us that he screwed up. He didn’t spend enough time talking about his wonderful, fantastic, transformative policies. He should have done a better job telling us how his awesome work was making our lives so much better. He is willing to take the blame for failing to adequately praise himself.

A Utah dad foiled an attempt to kidnap his young daughter from her bed early Friday after confronting a man carrying her across the lawn.

The 5-year-old girl wasn’t hurt in the frightening experience, but the incident has evoked haunting echoes of when 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was snatched out of her Salt Lake City bedroom in 2002. She was held captive for nine months before being found.

The suspect in this case entered the home through an unlocked door at about 4:30 a.m., in Sandy, a middle-class suburb south of Salt Lake City, Police Sgt. Dean Carriger said.

The intruder was in the family’s basement searching through things when he came upon the girl sleeping in her bedroom, Carriger said. The suspect took her out of bed and carried her upstairs, making noises that woke the parents.

The girl’s father went to the door and saw the man carrying his daughter in the front lawn. He ran outside and confronted the man, asking him what he was doing and demanding that he give back his little girl.

The suspect handed her over to her father without confrontation, Carriger said.

The suspect then fled, and the father called 911.

We are all thinking the same thing. This probably should have ended with an application of the Second Amendment. Still, it came out okay.

President Obama chose Loretta Lynch, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., as his nominee to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder Friday.

Obama plans to announce Lynch’s nomination Saturday at a White House event. If confirmed, Lynch will become the first African-American woman in the job, succeeding Holder, who was the first African-American head of the Justice Department.

The ball is now in the new Senate’s court as to when Lynch’s confirmation will be. The White House has urged Senate officials to work out the timeline for her confirmation as soon as possible.

Democrats and Republicans have told the White House it would be difficult and damaging to the nominee politically to try to push her through while Democrats control of the Senate. Republicans will oversee her confirmation with the next Congress.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, has already indicated that he is unhappy Obama is making the nomination now, instead of during the new session, when Republicans will have the majority in both chambers.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case that Obamacare subsidies can only be paid in states that set up exchanges and not in the 36 states that use the federal exchange. This is a pretty big deal. SCOTUS could have walked away and left the status quo in place.

A federal appeals court upheld Internal Revenue Service regulations that allow health-insurance tax credits under the Affordable Care Act for consumers in all 50 states.

But opponents of the subsidies argued the Supreme Court should resolve the issue now because it involves billions of dollars in public money. At least four justices, needed to grant review, apparently agreed with the challengers that the issue is important enough to decide now.

The case is likely to be heard in the spring of 2015.

“The plain language of the law makes it clear that subsidies are only to be provided for the purchase of health coverage through exchanges setup by the states,” Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., said in a statement. “Nevertheless, the Obama administration and others are asking the courts to disregard the letter of the law and instead rule based on bureaucratic rewrites and revisions.”

President Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 additional U.S. troops to Iraq, more than doubling the number being deployed to help Iraqi forces fight the Islamic State.

The president also requested an additional $5.6 billion on Friday for the war against the Islamic State, in part to cover the additional deployments.

The decisions reflect a deepening U.S. involvement in the region, though the White House again stressed that U.S. personnel “will not be in combat,” but rather training, advising and assisting Iraqi forces near Baghdad and Irbil.

Currently, there are about 1,400 U.S. troops in Iraq.

The White House troop request comes with a $3.7 billion price tag. Of that, $3.2 billion will go to the Department of Defense while $500 million will go to the State Department.

Why? Because they can. It’s the 2014 version of the Sudetenland. You know, we have peace in our time.

A column of 32 tanks, 16 howitzer artillery systems and trucks carrying ammunition and fighters has crossed into eastern Ukraine from Russia, the Kiev military said on Friday.

“The deployment continues of military equipment and Russian mercenaries to the front lines,” spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in a televised briefing referring to Thursday’s cross-border incursion.

The report of a new Russian movement of armor across the border follows a charge on Thursday by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine that Kiev government forces had launched a new offensive – which Kiev immediately denied.

If this is ignored, the Baltics – which are NATO countries – will be at risk. Dangerous games.